Tag: Food Security

Is the Collapse of UK Farming and Food Security now inevitable?

From the position where I am looking at everything UK Farmers and the supporting businesses and sectors around them now face, I regrettably believe that a collapse of UK Farming and our Food Chain is now inevitable.

The accelerating downward trajectory of UK Farming will not be stopped until events take over, or the majority of UK Farmers step back and see everything they face differently.

Quite a statement I know. Not least of all because it flies in the face of a great many names that the industry respects, whom I have no personal quarrel with.

Somewhat disconcertingly, despite the bubbles of different interests that exist across the industry; when it comes to the answers, solutions and whatever we can expect to happen next, everyone – other than perhaps just a few like me – is looking the very same way.

Expectation vs Reality

Farmers, Farmers membership and advocacy organisations and even No Farmers No Food expect the problems the industry has to be solved by the same people and organisations that not only caused them, but are accelerating the problems being experienced right now.

Few Farmers agree with what I have to say. Because those who are Farming today typically see Farming, the role of Farming and how Farming is being treated by industry and government in a very different way.

To be fair, I wouldn’t expect anything else. Farmers are far from being alone when it comes to the questions over what we know, what we believe and what is normal to expect from the businesses and organisations that we have relationships with and most importantly, the people that we elect.

However, it really shouldn’t be hard for anyone to stop, step back and remember that what we see and what is happening can be very different things.

Power of the political and financial kind has always been open to abuse. Many will have heard the expression ‘Give them bread and circuses’ that dates to Roman times and demonstrates how the public have always been ‘played’. So that those in power can reduce the risk to their position, no matter what might be going on.

Unfortunately, we are navigating a period of human history where manipulation in the forms of marketing, narratives and fear rolled out in many peculiar forms, is used very effectively to create a situation where any one of us can find ourselves questioning our own common sense and what we actually believe.

The internet, smart phones and the arrival of the most recent forms of Artificial Intelligence have made the problem all the more severe.

The reality that we do question what we can trust at least peripherally has the rather perverse outcome for many of making it even more likely that we will trust people and organisations, because of who they are and how their roles are presented to us, when we really shouldn’t be doing anything other than steering a wide berth from anything they say or compel us to do.

In real terms, this means that anyone, including Farmers, no matter how well educated or experienced, is likely to believe and accept as truth whatever those benefitting from whatever is happening to each and every Farm want us or that Farmer to believe.

And they sure don’t like it when anyone questions the validity of what they say and what is likely to just be a partial truth might be.

What is really ‘in play’ today?

The attack on UK Farming didn’t begin on 30th October, when The Chancellor unveiled the assault on Inheritance Tax Relief on the generational transfer of working Family Farms.

What it did herald however, was the step of taking the war to destroy UK Food Production as we have known it, into the open. Instead of the whole thing being hidden in plain sight, as it has been for decades before.

They have done this:

Either because the politicians we have and those who advise or influence them are now confident enough that the industry no longer has the clout or leverage to stop them.

Or more likely, because they are now desperate to contain the threat of power being returned to the Farmers themselves.

(Because the whole system that has been working and undermining everything for greed, profit and control since the early 70’s has now reached a point where the economic system that underpins it could collapse, and they could lose their control at any time.)

The outcry from the general public over Farmers IHT has taken the political classes more than a little by surprise.

They believed that the accompanying narrative that ‘Farmers must pay their way like everyone else’ would very quickly resonate with the general public. Given that the left has always happily propagated myths like ‘You never see a poor Farmer’.

What the establishment didn’t expect was a predominantly visceral response from so many different people. Where instincts have told even those not consciously thinking about it that any attack on Farming isn’t about Farming. It’s actually an attack on our Food.

Is Farming really about self-interest or public interest?

Regrettably, this is where maintaining the momentum for supporting Farmers becomes tricky. Because many Farmers see their businesses as being all about income and profit. In a similar way, if not in the very same sense as the politicians do.

With what seems impeccable timing and within a month of the Budget announcement, an initiative landed on social media that informed anyone watching that a new methane-reducing feed supplement initiative is about to be launched and underway using Farms that are contracted into the corporate system.

The relationship between Farms and a processor suggests that this isn’t a matter of choice.

So, it didn’t come as any great surprise that the issues raised by the implications of ‘playing god with natural processes’ would immediately create a new division between those who ‘cannot’ say no to such ‘trials’, because of the financial implications of doing so, and those who see and are at least beginning to question the vein of commonality flowing through every attack on UK Farming.

The last minutes of a VERY long game

Whether its supermarket prices, chemical additive use required by processors, the freeing up of capital that invested in Land and Farms through new punitive taxes, the disintegrating financial support from government and the public sector, or the bureaucracy that has steadily transformed everything since our membership of the deliberately flawed Common Market and latterly The EU began, they all have a war on the ability of the UK  and more importantly our communities to run and thrive independently with Food in common at their very core.

In the world we are now being shoehorned into, Money talks and bullshit quite literally walks.

Food Production as we traditionally know it, is the antithesis of everything that those controlling our lives and businesses want and represent.

Who am I and why am I presenting a different understanding of the status quo?

I realise and understand why few can see or even agree with what I am saying here and what I write, speak and publish about Food, Farming and Food Security – amongst many other public policy related things.

Before 12 years in frontline politics, roles in professional charity leadership and years of being an entrepreneur and living the highs and traumatising lows of being in and around businesses, I began my career in farming – where I always had a strong affiliation with the Dairy Sector and made many friendships as a Young Farmer that I maintain to this day.

Farming and specifically Agri-contracting is a big thing within my wider family and beyond the proud heritage of my grandfather being a highly skilled wheelwright and pioneer in hydraulic farm trailer manufacturing, my great grandfather was a steam ploughman too.

My active interest in politics, or rather my driving belief in something better for everyone, in public service and for community working has been at the centre of so much of what I have done and what I still do.

That interest has taken me on a path that led me to appreciate how important the independence of local Food Chains to Our Future will now be. But also, to spend time completing a Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security at the Royal Ag, where my fears about the position and outlook of the industry and where it is being led were starkly confirmed and amplified.

The watershed UK Farming is now within

It is difficult for anyone thinking rationally or logically to believe the realities and mechanics of the position that Farming and the wider economy now find themselves in.

Not because of the expertise and knowledge that is there to be tapped into by those who need it suggests otherwise.

But because nothing that is happening to Farming, to people or in politics at any level across the UK as we know it today, is in any way that which it seems.

I’m sure that you will agree it is more than likely that anyone questioned would at least admit that they believe something is going very wrong. Even if they cannot or would not try to identify what that something is.

In the few days after the Budget bombshell was dropped, I began writing ‘Who Controls Our Food Controls Our Future’, in an attempt to open up the reality of what is happening and why within the UK Food Chain.

I did so in what does today feel like the forlorn hope that at least some of the people and businesses that I care so deeply about would at the very least conduct a review of what they currently believe to be true.

Within ‘Who Controls Our Food Controls Our Future’, I discussed the strange but nonetheless compelling ‘situational bias’ that is holding us back from looking at anything and everything differently to what we already know and do.

Because we have trapped ourselves with the belief that we can only trust the sources, systems, procedures, businesses, organisations and news channels that we already know.

It is this situational bias that today presents the greatest risk to the future of UK Farming and with it the UKs Food Security and our Food Supply.

All of which should quite rightly be placed at the heart and function of our Local Communities and everything that we know.

Sadly, most of us still believe that the mind of Politicians can be changed politically. When the game that they are playing and which the politicians and those who control them have framed, isn’t politics at all.

By continuing to engage in any way that shows deference to them and their system and their way of working, rather than just sticking to the basic level of adherence to the rules which the current way of working requires that we all respect, the power of change and control over our future remains firmly in their hands.

The option to save UK Farming and with it our Food Security and a future that will give us all much more besides exists.

But it is also a journey and process where there isn’t politics of the kind that Westminster controls involved.

Play it their way or play it our way.

The Food that UK Farmers can produce is a key part of Our Future. But the choice of whether Farms end up at the centre of that future, or die without anyone other than the politicians themselves knowing why is for Farmers to decide.

Like everything. Its all about the way that we think.

Will Farmers advocates, membership representatives and activists make Inheritance Tax the hill that the future of U.K. Food Security dies on?

Uncomfortable to read as it may be, the well-known membership and advocacy organisations that supposedly enjoy ‘real’ influence on government and the other layers of ‘The Food Chain Onion’, and purportedly represent their members interests before anything else, are actually just players in an establishment game.

The officers and leaders amongst them value the access or relationships that they have with government departments, politicians and representatives above everything and to a level where they will not do anything that will risk those relationships.

When the wishes of the advocacy and membership organisations are aligned with what the government of the time is doing, we can be sure that industry representatives will walk away with what appear to be some great wins.

Just as they will appear to do so when the aims aren’t aligned and the politicians will make some sort of concession so that they can misrepresent and link to other issues that they will not rescind on.

This may regrettably yet prove to be the case with Inheritance Tax and linking it to UK Food Security. Just so that a narrative can be created that the UK Food Security issue has been solved with the intent that it heaps together all the issues Politicians and Government Departments don’t want to deal with, and builds the spurious narrative that ‘The Food Security problem is now solved’.

Although we can all be sure that representatives of these Organisations make very reasoned representations to those they meet and communicate with, they also take any reassurances and promises they obtain at face value.

They regrettably fall back on the way of thinking that ‘It’s just the way it is’ and that it is better and more beneficial to be ‘in the tent’ than to do anything that would risk their position, and might stop them from being allowed back in. As many smaller less well known organisations will have tried to their cost.

Advocacy isn’t working and isn’t going to work, because you cannot reason with those who are unreasonable

In many cases without even understanding why they are being unreasonable, our politicians and the officers and public sector representatives that surround them only see reason in doing and pursuing the public policies and actions that they believe to be best for everyone, whilst actually only doing what’s best for them.

Populist ‘activism’ and their current approaches

In the case of activist ‘organisation’ No Farmers No Food, whose yellow branding with the black silhouette tractor is capturing support, they are certainly well-meaning and led by good intention.

However, like the advocacy and membership organisations that are in The Food Chain mix, they are also missing the point that the best people to solve the problem aren’t the same ones that caused it.

And the problem we are all facing is much bigger than lots of talking and protesting about whatever gets traction in the media and appears to stick.

The priority of UK Politics today simply isn’t UK Farming and Food Security

In respect of Government and the Politicians we are dealing with, the faces and the branding might have changed in July. But the motives and the direction that drives them is very much the same as those who were in Power before.

As I write and publish in November 2024, there is nobody and no political movement or party out there in the Public realm that has the ability, system-wide understanding or the properly reasoned intent to tackle and change any of the problems we face, when the next General Election in the UK comes. Whether its within months OR in 5 years’ time.

This is a very serious problem for us all.

Understanding Who Controls Our Food Controls Our Future –Everything You Need to Know
The Local Economy & Governance System | Online Text
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Food From Farms Guaranteed_PDF_Vers2_13Mar25Download
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Why UK Food Security depends on supporting UK Farmers

The seemingly constant talk about the Farmers’ Protest March that is being held in London on Tuesday 19th March certainly appears to have captured many of our thoughts.

The Farmers Inheritance Tax changes that were introduced in the 2024 Budget in October are certainly set to have a BIG impact upon UK Farming as we know it.

But whilst it’s easy to argue that Farmers should be subject to the same taxes as everyone else, we must all remember that we need at least 2x healthy meals a day to survive, and that Food and our access to it is therefore just as important as the air that we breathe and the water that we drink.

Food Production and UK Farms that are supplying fresh, nutritious, Locally Produced Food are as such a Public Good.

Their existence is essential for this reason and there must be support for Farmers – just like all different kinds of businesses have that are focused only on profit – so that they can stay that way.

The change in the Budget tells us that Politicians don’t see the future role of our Farms that way.

So, it is important that all of us – whether we are Consumers, Farmers or both – understand what is really going on across the UK Food Chain that is making Politicians believe that the direction of Food Production and UK Food Security is not only safe, but also good for everyone and fundamentally OK.

The link below will take you to the full online text of Who Controls Our Food Controls Our Future, which is also a Free to Download PDF and an e-book for Kindle (£1.99 in the UK from Amazon) which runs through the complexity and layers of The Food Chain, and the truths that are hidden in plain sight, from our everyday view.

There’s a lot to consider, no matter what we already know or the particular or perhaps ‘informed’ perspectives that we all have. So please do find the time if you can to have a look through, as you are likely to have a lot more questions of your own about why we are not giving priority to UK Food Production and the importance of Our Farms when you do.

Thank you for your interest and support.

#food #FoodSecurity #FarmersProtest #farmers #farming #foodchain

To download a FREE PDF Copy of Who Controls Our Food Controls Our Future, Please CLICK HERE. Alternatively, if you would like to download the Book for Kindle at £1.99 (UK Price), please follow the link through to Amazon that follows immediately below:

The last thing we need is a Farmers Revolt. But the U.K. DOES need a Farmer-led Food Chain Revolution, ASAP

With the Farmer’s March planned for this coming Tuesday, talk of all sorts of militancy and acts of rebellion from our Farmer’s have added to the chorus, with postulations and threats suggesting that a ‘Farmer Revolt’ could be on the way that will bring everything to a standstill, if the Farm Inheritance Tax changes aren’t overturned and the Farmers are seen to have got their way.

As covered in my blog yesterday, there really is no question that the Policy should be overturned. Because it will do damage to UK Farms, Farming and UK Food Security that we may very soon find ourselves unable to repair or restore to the correct place.

However, threatening or even talking up a ‘Revolt’ of any kind, could easily lead to consequences that nobody who is emotionally entrenched in this debate will have in mind. And they will certainly not expect.

It is vital we understand that Farmers are not dealing with real Leaders in our Government. These ‘politicians’ are not going to respond in ways that reflect anything other than who they are, why they are there and what they see as being the most important considerations for them – No matter how grounded the alternative and logic of the pro-Farming arguments levelled against them and their policies might be.

The culturally conditioned deference that we have for people because of job titles, roles, celebrity or even the number of people who follow, like and subscribe to them on social media, means that we automatically apply credibility to whatever they do.

We do so, without realising that we do so because we believe that they act, behave and approach everything in the same way we are, or that we believe we would do so, if we should find ourselves in exactly the same position as they are.

This ‘understanding’ works brilliantly until we disagree. But then we fall into the trap of believing and applying the same rationality for how they will behave, if we find ourselves on what we perceive to be the opposite side, whatever the reason might be.

There is much more to everything that this Government and the Government before it has done, is doing and will continue to do, if the political classes continue unhindered as things currently suggest that they will be.

The Budget move and the very clear statement made this week by former Blair Advisor John McTernan speaks Labour’s truth for the future they see for UK Farming.

The actions and words during the 2024 Budget and all of the interviews and messaging that has followed since, tell us that this really is the direction of travel that is ‘baked in’ for this Government.

It means these people really see no value in UK Farming as it is right now. Even though they may not be sharing what they anticipate the future of UK Food Production will be.

One thing we can be sure of however, is that our politicians are very smallminded and fearful. No matter what the drivers behind all of this really are.

If anyone genuinely believes that militancy and obstructive action will yield anything other than direct impact to anyone and everything effected on the days of the events themselves in this climate, they really should re-read the room.

Small, minded politicians are led by their own fears in everything they do. Cause they a big public problem that makes bad headlines for them and they will not hesitate to use every power at their disposal to end even the remotest possibility that Farmers could act this way or do the same to them again.

Its not communism or even the stupidity of incompetent politicians within the Political Party in power that led to this. WE keep electing people as public representatives who are fundamentally just the same.

They are coin-operated, do not understand what they are even supposed to be doing and will always look to whoever is complaining about what they are doing as the ideal direction to apportion blame.

However, even MORE importantly than the incompetence of our politicians; there are 39 days until Christmas – or less than 6 weeks.

For better or worse, the Supermarket aisles are filled up with everything for what has sadly become an annual 3-month festival of consumerism that the British Public have now bought into.

The last thing that Farmers should contemplate doing this week is deliberately leveraging themselves into the middle of this equation, pissing off precisely all of the people they most need to be aligned with.

The Food Revolution we do need is one that places Food Production right back at the heart of Our Local Communities. With Farmers leading and playing their part from the very front.

The destinies of Our Farmers, Our Communities and Our People are intricately entwined. Because of just how important Food is to each of us for survival and the role at the centre of life that Food plays, that we have been deliberately encouraged to overlook or forget.

We must not allow the establishment to diminish the role of UK Food Security any further. Irrespective of whether the reason for all they have done is just stupidity or maligned intent.

However, we also need to be clear that for as long as we have the same kinds of People running the Country, speaking with the same voices and influencing people just because of the platforms they have, they and only they remain the ones who legitimately get to set and control the national agenda. No matter how damaging to all of us it really is.

They will continue to do so, until an agenda that legitimately sits outside of their control exists and grows to benefit all of us and take their place.

The need for a collaborative approach to UK Farming PDF_Vers1_25Mar25Download
Food From Farms Guaranteed_PDF_Vers2_13Mar25Download

Dear Farmers: PLEASE don’t mess with the Law of Unintended Consequences on Tuesday. A well-organised March in London will be enough to show how miffed you are

Watching developments since the 2024 Budget on the 30th of October has seen, debate, support and plans for the Farmers March in London evolve – which we have every reason to believe is being planned as well and responsibly as a protest can, by The Farming Forum.

However, as we near the 19th of November, suggestions of holding back food supplies to supermarkets, refusing to accommodate sewage sludge and bringing the country to a standstill threaten to take the whole crisis that U.K. Farming and our Food Security are experiencing, in a direction that could make this hidden Food Crisis considerably worse.

The growing strength of feeling really does risk giving those directly involved that Farmers have the power to solve every problem in one hit. And that they should therefore take it.

However, issues surrounding changes to Farmers Inheritance Tax do not stand alone in isolation. The breadth and depth of issues about how the entire UK Food Chain is being misused are both highly complex and considerably bigger than many farmers even realise.

And whilst any Farmer or Supporter may believe that headlines and commentary suggest the Government is ‘now on the run’ and will make concessions or change their mind if pushed hard enough, militancy of any kind at this stage, is more likely to lead to even worse outcomes for the industry than the drastic improvements and turnarounds that those banging drums and driving tractors may have on their current wish list.

Former Labour Advisor, John McTernan has told everyone, very loudly and very openly in an interview that that the U.K. does not need Small Farmers.

Whilst Starmer has attempted to ‘disown’ this suggestion, and whether our politicians are stupid and are doing stupid things or not, we would all be foolish to not accept and work with the reality that the people running this country until perhaps 2029, no longer see value in the UKs Small Farms.

We must all be very clear that if the Government believes that ‘Small Farms aren’t necessary, when they are not talking about Farms that are actually that small, the Government is not going to do anything to reward an industry for causing them problems, when they already have a picture of the future that surely resembles many if not all Small Farms being closed down.

We shouldn’t doubt that the Inheritance Tax move itself was a very big ‘tell’.

Politicians have now reached the stage in an ongoing process of UK Farming viability removal, where they no longer believe it necessary to show any care for Farmers.

With the belief that the only helpful thing I can do is to share what I know and understand, I sat down to write Who Controls Our Food Controls Our Future with the aim that anyone genuinely interested would have the option of a quick walk through the entire background of the hidden Food Crisis.

I had been writing about our politicians and why they no longer care, and had a jaw dropping moment when the very serious warning from the political classes which is the McTernan comment was so very quickly shared after the 30th October Budget.

Right now, the direction of travel for U.K. Farming as we know it is terminal. 3rd party interests right across the Food Chain – NOT just the politicians themselves – believe in a future where the Food we eat will either be a source of guaranteed profit for corporate giants or just another governance tool for societal control.

Such aims require that Food Production cannot be left in even the most isolated pair of hands. Because any form of independence in the Food Chain will be a massive threat.

The evidence is there and no longer even hiding in plain sight.

Politicians across our political sphere today do not fear losing Small Farmers. But they will be very fearful of even a moment of social unrest and are unlikely to respond well to any acts that create problems for them that might suggest to the Public that they are not in control.

Much like the follow-up to the unrest in Southport in the Summer this Government is likely to work like they are on steroids to achieve anything they believe necessary to stop Farmers from ever having the opportunity to make them look bad again.

We ALL need to realise that the dystopian nightmare is already here.

We just haven’t stood back to view the whole wood yet, rather than each of our different trees.

We all need to wake up quickly and begin playing a very different game, before it really is too late.

The next step, could regrettably come very quickly following any action or events that aren’t thought through properly. And such actions – even if only involving just a few, would be akin to the whole Farming Industry shooting itself in the foot.

Not only do People across the UK need OUR Farming industry to survive. WE ALL need UK Farmers to take back all of the control that they have lost, putting Food and Food Production back at the very heart of our Local Communities, as just the start.

No help and certainly nothing good will come now from anyone or any organisation that profits in any way from where UK Farming is heading today. Other than lip service, contractual devices, sops and incentives that will keep Farmers doing what those interests want Farmers to do and keep Farmers believing that things will get better at some unknown point in the future.

Meanwhile these interests will continue to rinse every last penny that they can from ALL of us, whilst systematically destroying the ability of Farmers, People and Communities to have Food Chain Independence at any level and of any kind.

Please don’t fall into the trap of giving any of them even the slightest reason to make things worse for Farmers, whilst they still can.

Otherwise, what is left of UK Farming may not be able to recover.

Food From Farms Guaranteed_PDF_Vers2_13Mar25Download
The need for a collaborative approach to UK Farming PDF_Vers1_25Mar25Download